The play was good and the meal excellent. I loved the time with my two sisters. I also visited my uncle, our favorite uncle. I hadn’t seen him in a while. It was good to sit and chat. He used to call me Leeny, shortened from Kathleen.

The ride home was in torrential rain. Even the quickest setting on my wipers wasn’t enough at times. The traffic slowed in the worst of it. As I got closer to the bridge, the traffic was lighter so less backsplash. That was the best part of the ride. 

When I was a kid, snow at Christmas made for a special world. Even though the bulbs on our front bushes got covered, their colors shined through the layers of snow, and soon enough the snow on those lights would melt from the heat of the bulbs while the rest of the bush stayed covered. The house looked like a magical place. The plows never completely removed the snow off the streets. I loved to walk on the side of the road and listen to the crunch sound my footsteps used to make on the packed snow. It was almost a squeaky sound. 

One year on Christmas Eve my mother asked me to go to the store to get bread. There was no snow so I took my bike out of the cellar and pedaled to the white store. All the way there I kept thinking my mother had no idea of the importance of Christmas Eve or she wouldn’t have sent me on such a mundane errand. It was the day of all days. Every kid knew that. My mother didn’t.

The weather is dreary. I have a couple of errands and that’s it on my to do list for today, but I’ll probably wrap some more tonight. When we were adults, my mother wrapped every gift and every tag on my gifts read to Kat from Santa. My father used to help. We could easily identified his wrappings. One year my mother was behind, and I offered to help wrap. She’d hand me a box, and I’d wrap. A couple of times she told me the tag should read to Kat from Santa. I had wrapped my own gifts. She was a tricky Santa.

Gloomy, damp and dark are the adjectives for today. When I got the papers, it was even colder than I thought it would be. The sky is rain ready. 

Today is play day. My two sisters and I are going to see It’s a Wonderful Life. My mother started this tradition. She’d treat us to a Christmas event then we’d go out to dinner. We had a table at the Pops one year and saw Death of a Salesman with Brian Dennehy another year. Most times we went to the local theater, and that’s where we’re going today. We’ll have dinner afterwards. It is such a Christmas treat to have my sister Moe here from Colorado. 

Tradition is so tied up with Christmas. One year my sister’s whole family came for the holidays. My mother, my sister and I baked tremendous amounts of cookies and candy. We each made spritz cookies because my mother had made them every year when we were kids and we wanted to honor the tradition. One of the fun memories of these cookies is the year my mother added red and green food coloring to the dough to make the cookies festive. My father wouldn’t eat them. The color gave them a weird taste was his complaint. We laughed. My mother always left them plain after that. 

My tree is decorated. The only things left on my to do list are shop at the grocery store, make cookies and wrap cape gifts. Last week at this time I was in a panic. 

I have a Santa hat for Henry to wear for pictures. I also have some Christmas bandanas. What are the odds he’ll wear them long enough for a few shots? 

The B doesn’t work on my keyboard. I couldn’t get into my computer because there are B’s in the password. I got into this program through guest user. I tried resetting my password and thought I did, but no luck. I’m still a guest. As for the missing b’s, I copy and paste. 

Christmas is getting closer. It’s almost time for the countdown.